By Pepper Parr
October 29th,2025
BURLINGTON, ON
On November 4th – six days away, City Council will consider a Motion put forward by Ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns, asking that Council send the matter of swimming pool allocation to the Audit Committee. for a thorough review of how the decision was made to use an Procurement process to decide how much time the BAD club would be given.
The YMCA swimming pool – ground zero for the BAD swimmers
The issue is that the City chose the wrong process to decide how many hours of pool time the Burlington Aquatic Devilrays would get to run their program. In the past they were allocated 50 hours a week – they now have 17 hours and that it as the YMCA pool – not a city pool.
Kimberly Callderbank was the volunteer president of the Club until August – she hung on until very recently when she left entirely.
The BAD board members nominated eight people and later added these people to the 12-member board.
To date, we are not aware of what, if anything, the new Board has done.
We are not aware if they are planning to delegate at the Council meeting that takes place during the day.
The club is facing a sad end if it cannot get the pool time they need to run programs.
Everyone appreciates that the board members are volunteers and there are limits on their time.
Ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan happens to live in Ward 2.
One of the first things they might want to do is ask Council to defer the Motion that is to be heard on the 4th to a date that would permit an evening meeting when parents could take part in the proceedings.
The current Council does not favour evening meetings unless they can result in at least two photo ops that often have more Council members showing their curated smiles for the camera than citizens.
The Gazette continues to fail to accurately report what Councilor Kearns’ motion actually seeks to achieve.
As previously pointed out through a comment I made to another Gazette article, the motion clearly states that Council is being asked to direct the matter directly to the City Auditor; not as stated in this and other Gazette articles, to the City’s Audit Committee.
There is a subtle but very important difference.
The Audit Committee is a City oversight body, the members of which are appointed by the City and is comprised of both City councilors (3) and City residents (4).
The City Auditor is an independent third party professional appointed by Council who is experienced in performing all sorts of audits from financial audits to systems, process, conflict audits.
A possibility exists that if Council past a motion to refer the matter to the Audit Committee that committee might after reviewing the matter determine to take no further action. By referring the matter directly to the City Auditor that possibility is eliminated.
This article’s headline is predeterminate. No one knows for sure whether anything did go wrong. Many people have an opinion that something did go wrong, but no one knows for sure. That’s the whole point of the audit – to discover if something did go wrong; if so what that was; and if so how it happened. The audit will be to undertake a thorough and complete review of all aspects of the 2025 RFP and the bid award. Not just as the article says to determine why a decision was made to use the same single winner RFP as used in 2020.
The Gazette reported on August 6th that BAD had received 18 hours per week of pool time in City of Burlington pools. The contract for the pooltime is for 4 years.
This was based on a statement by BAD that was also reported in other media.
It was also reported that BAD had come to an agreement with the YMCA for additional pool time.
Other media reported that the agreement with the YMCA was for an additional 17 hours of pool time combined with dry land training.
The Gazette needs to get itself clear on the facts.
Editor’s note: Unfortunately Mr Thomson there has been a paucity of information from everyone on this issue. We go with what we can get it when we get it.